Exploring factors affecting students’ usage and adoption of web 2.0 technologies at school of computing and informatics, university of nairobi: Theory and empirical tests

Abstract

Frequent technological innovations have increased the desire of students to adopt new technologies in their learning processes. Although a lot of studies have highlighted how teaching and learning can benefit from the inclusion of Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, wikis, and social bookmarking, there is insufficient report to support that indeed students use these emerging technologies in their learning processes. The purpose of this study was to assess students’ awareness of the benefits of Web 2.0 to supplement conventional learning and better understand their decisions to adopt these tools using the decomposed theory of planned behavior (DTPB) model.

A survey study was conducted with the help of structured questionnaire on 120 students (out of total population of 536). A total of 120 self-administered questionnaires were distributed among 1st years, 2nd years, 3rd years, 4th years and masters’ students by adopting stratified random sampling. 85 valid samples were collected and analyzed.

Findings indicated that while some students feel that some Web 2.0 technologies could improve their learning, their interaction with staffs and with other peers, their writing abilities, and their satisfaction with the courses; few choose to use them in their study. Additional results indicated that students’ attitude and their perceived behavioral control are strong indicators of their intention to use Web 2.0 technologies. A number of implications are drawn highlighting how the use of Web 2.0 technologies could be useful in learning.